


ghosts

by nightbloomingflowers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Empire Era, Mourning, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26016118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingflowers/pseuds/nightbloomingflowers
Summary: There are still days when Numa wakes up choking on ashes and dust of a village long forgotten.
Relationships: Boil & Numa & Waxer (Star Wars), Boil & Numa (Star Wars), Numa & Waxer (Star Wars), Obi-Wan Kenobi & Numa
Comments: 10
Kudos: 64





	ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> sad oneshot! Numa looks back on the people that saved her life.

There are still days when Numa wakes up choking on ashes and dust of a village long forgotten.

Her village, her once-home, which had been small and humble, yet bright and filled with life. Now the broken homes house only ghosts.

She remembers playing with the other children on her street, blissfully unaware of the horrors that lay in their future. They’d make dolls out of scraps of fabric, played at war and pretended they knew what it meant to be a soldier.

Numa doesn’t pretend anymore. If the Separatists meant the death of her childhood, then the Empire meant the rise of a soldier.

She does not see much difference between the Empire and the Separatists. They both sell her people into slavery and leave the suffering to rot. Yet she remembers the _clank_ - _clank_ of droids when her homeland was first invaded, and now it is the _thud_ - _thud_ of heavy boots guarding flesh and bone. Numa knows that many of their stormtroopers do not choose this life, but there is no way to separate the believers from the enslaved. And if she has to choose between them and her people, she will always choose her people. It’s why she is one of Cham’s most trusted.

But on those days that ashes cling to her throat, she can’t help but remember those other white-clad soldiers without a choice. She hadn’t known, then, that the clones that saved her life had no say in their own. But she knows now. Numa wears white armor in their honor, wears their names into battle and fights for them like they fought for her.

She hopes that none of the stormtroopers are clones. Those days when dust fills her lungs are the days she lets Gobi take the shot instead of her, because she cannot bear the thought of killing those who share the face of her brothers.

Cham had told her, at the start of this new war (or was it really the middle of an old one?) that the clone troopers had killed the Jedi Knights, and for a moment Numa had thought of those whom she had claimed as _nerra_ , thought, _how_ _could_ _you_?

But she’d known that could not be right. She’d seen the way Boil and Waxer had protected their Jedi, had felt that Master’s—Obi-Wan Kenobi’s—hand on her shoulder and comforting words in her ear. The clones she knew could not have killed their Jedi, their heart-family, in cold blood. So she had done her own searching, had heard whispers of _chips_ _in_ _their_ _heads_ , of soldiers without a choice.

Now she knows that Boil and Waxer are ghosts just like her village, even if their feet walk the ground somewhere in the galaxy. Those chips in their heads made them something else. Flesh and bone, yes, but droid at heart.

So when Numa wakes up choking on ashes and dust of a village long forgotten, she mourns her people—and she mourns her brothers, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it, and I’ll love you for commenting!  
> [i’m soplantyourownflowers on tumblr!](https://soplantyourownflowers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> also i mention ghosts a bunch of times in this but i didn’t even make the connection to ghost company until after it was finished and i’m even more sad now


End file.
